Importance of Hashtags on Instagram

Introduction

As humanity evolves and the things that become popular throughout the globe evolve with us, the emergence of internet giant Instagram seems like something that is here to stay. One of the most important aspects is the action of putting hashtags on your pictures to make them more accessible. Instagram has incorporated the importance of hashtags into their system immensely, as although Twitter was the main pioneer of hash tagging, Instagram has been able to also become a company that is associated with hashtags. The importance of hashtags to Instagram can’t be understated, as it hashtags have become one of Instagram’s foundations.

What are Hashtags?

Hashtags have taken the world by storm this decade, and it is likely that anyone that has access to Instagram or any other social networking site will have an idea of what a hashtag is. However, there is a chance that an individual won’t know what a hashtag is at all, which is why this is part of the Article, as why would anyone want to know what the significance of the hashtag is when they don’t even know what a hashtag is in the first place!

Essentially, a hashtag involves using the hash key, and follow it with a specific word that may be associated with the picture or idea that is being portrayed by the author. A hashtag gives a pose more exposure as people who are looking for something specific can just enter a hashtag into the search bar and will be able to see content that is related to this specific thing.

Hashtags are simple but extremely useful, because they help organise pictures into specific categories, meaning that people will see more of things that they are interested in, rather than having to filter out all the posts they aren’t interested in.

Importance of Hashtags to Instagram

Because of the way that Instagram have chosen to develop, the hashtag has become much more important on this application than it is in practically any other app other than perhaps Twitter. Instagram have recently added a feature that allows a User to follow hashtags, which is a big deal as no other major application had offered this feature before.

The hashtag is important to Instagram because it maximises the exposure that posts are able to receive. No other site has offered everyday people the amount of opportunity to be noticed so easily, which is much more important than it sounds when you read it. If users are able to look at things they like to look at more consistently because they follow hashtags, then it is likely that this will cause more users to come and try Instagram and will more importantly be another reason why current users would want to stay and continue to use Instagram.

Instagram is more important to hashtags than hashtags are to Instagram, however, without hashtags Instagram would be lacking something that many people tend to take for granted, as users wouldn’t be able to find what they want to see as easily as they can now, which means that the opportunity for another company to implement it into their system first will rise, which could affect Instagram negatively.

Conclusion

The importance of hashtags to Instagram cannot be measured easily, although it is easy to understand that hashtags are extremely important to the continued success of Instagram. Hashtags are a simple concept that Instagram are able to take advantage of thoroughly, and although Instagram will still survive and thrive without hashtags, it is likely that if Instagram never put an emphasis on hashtags, that they wouldn’t see the magnitude of success that they have been seeing.